Category Archives: Out and About

Another long distance First to Find …

June 22, 2012 Scott Leave a comment

Prior to leaving Alice Springs, I checked for any new cache listings since I had left South Australia. What luck, there was a new one at Glendambo – only 940 kilometres away. And at this time no one had made a find on it. The cache is Dam Glenbo.

It is only 10 hours driving away. Sounds like a good spot to stay tonight and maybe grab a FTF as well. 🙂

Today was uneventful, however, it was getting cooler the more I headed south. There were clear skies all the way to Coober Pedy and then there were some rain clouds heading over from the west. It is probably a good decision not taking the Oodnadatta Track as I wouldn’t want to get stuck there (or would I 😉 )

I arrived at Glendambo just after dark, negotiated a few tracks to find a tree on the edge of town.

Out with a torch, found the cache, opened the cache to find a virgin log book – Yay, another long distance “First to Find”. 🙂

Another big drive tomorrow across to Loxton.

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4WDing, Geocaching, Holidays, Out and About

A Town like Alice …

June 21, 2012 Scott Leave a comment

Today was a “rest” day of sorts. This meant that no long distance driving but take in some of the sights around Alice Springs.

I started at the northern end of town and drove what is left of the old Stuart Highway into the Alice Springs Telegraph Station Historical Reserve. One of the popular spots for the locals is Wigleys Waterhole but there was no-one there today.

Next onto the old Telegraph Station with a walk along the Todd River and up to Bungalow Hill to take in the view.

Up to Anzac Hill for lunch which has commanding views over the town and the MacDonnell Ranges.

I traveled west along the West MacDonnell Ranges and through Honeymoon Gap to the old Ghan Rail Line.

It was interesting that the track alongside the old rail line was in better condition than the Old South Road. Also managed to take in some of the track used by the Finke Desert Race.

After visiting the Ewaninga Fettler Cottages and Ewaninga Reserve it was back to the Heavitree Gap Outback Lodge to feed some very hungry Rock Wallabies.

Tomorrow is a 940 kilometre drive to Glendambo.

$Wigley\'s Waterhole$

$Flynn\'s Grave$

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Geocaching, Out and About

2902 kilometres for a First to Find ….

June 15, 2012 Scott Leave a comment

On the back of my challenge of the longest distance in a day for 2 cache finds (one in South Australia and one in Nevada), I thought I would do another challenge – longest drive for a First to Find (FTF).

My drive started at the Clare Caching Capers II Event GC3FXFG, where I was told of an unfound challenge cache up in Darwin.

The challenge involved having found a cache in every 10km band from your home location up to your age x10 so in my case 490 km.

It is GC3MBC5 – The Well-Travelled and Aged Cacher: NT.

I did the queries in GSAK and found that I had found a cache in the 49 distance bands required. Now to get the cache and hopefully a FTF.

I was heading north anyway so a long distance FTF was going to be a bonus.

Well after 4 days and 2902 km I arrived at ground zero (GZ) to find it all burnt out and on the ground were some burnt spray cans and a sorry looking eclipse tin. Surely this wasn’t it.

I looked over a couple of metres and there appeared to be something buried. I unscrewed it and it appeared to be the cache or was it.

I opened the container only to find a puzzle to be solved to find the final GZ.

Thinking caps on and a few texts to the owner on clues to solving the puzzle then finally about 10:30 pm I had the puzzle solved.

The only problem is that I would not be able to get to the final GZ for another 18 hours due to my commitments in Darwin.

It seemed a long day but finally the time came to find the cache.

I drove up to GZ, thinking surely the FTF would have gone by now. Opened the ammo tin, took out the log book, opened it up to find …… I was FTF. 😀

So after 5 days and 2902 kms (plus a few extra back and forth into Darwin) I had a long distance drive FTF.

I guess now how many have driven further for a FTF …

4WDing, Holidays, Out and About

Big Drive today – Alice Springs to Mataranka …

June 13, 2012 Scott 1 Comment

It was a cool start today for the big drive with overcast skies and a few drops of rain but this was short lived with clear skies for most of the day.

I didn’t make too many stops today as there was a mission of getting to Mataranka and a soak in the thermal pool – a drive of 1065 kilometres which was achieved in 11 hours with fuel stops.

The fuel gauge went down a little quicker in the first leg to Tennant Creek as I sat on 125 kph (the speed limit up here is 130 kph). For the second leg I dropped it back to 115 as the roos were starting to appear but they are only little ones. 🙂

Tomorrow is an easy drive of 400 km into Darwin.

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12 of 12, 4WDing, Geocaching, Holidays, Out and About

Coober Pedy to Alice Springs – June 12 of 12 …

June 12, 2012 Scott Leave a comment

What a great day for travelling – clear skies and not too warm and no wind (although there was a little cloud around Coober Pedy). Today was another big day on the road with a 700 km drive from Coober Pedy to Alice Springs.

After filling up and a quick drive around town it was time to head north. The landscape around here is a bit of a moonscape with all the diggings – you wouldn’t want to stumble around here in the dark.

Made the diversion to the Breakaways and was surprised to see no-one else out there.

The further north I went you could see the results of the good rains over the last few years with plenty of growth in both the trees and the grasses. The colour of the soil also changes to a deep red.

Continuing along the Stuart Highway through Cadney Park, Marla and then crossing the border into Northern Territory. Of course there is the obligatory photo at the border. 🙂

While at Marla, I checked wotif.com as I knew that accommodation would be scarce in Alice Springs including the caravan parks due to the Finke Desert Race having just finished. Although there were a lot of cars and bike returning south, the locals were cleaning up with their rates and minimum stays. I managed to book a room in a B&B for only $10 more than what the caravan parks were asking for an unpowered site. My digs tonight would be the B & B Pathdorf.

It is almost as soon as you go over the border that the rocks start to rise from the ground with a lot of Ranges starting to appear. Next couple of towns are Kulgera and then Erldunda.

I had filled the tanks at Coober Pedy thinking that I had plenty of fuel to get through to Alice Springs. From previous experience, when the low fuel light came on there was about 10 litres of fuel left which equated to 80 kilometres travel. At about 80 kms out from Alice Springs, the low fuel light came on. I slowed it up a bit and took it easy into Alice Springs.

After arriving in Alice Springs, it was a struggle to find a petrol station that was open and eventually found one with only 4 litres of fuel remaining.

Through Facebook, I found that a work colleague was in Alice Springs as well so we met up in town and had some steaks at Bojangles Saloon – this place would look right at home in the Wild West and the meals were good too.

That is it for today. Tomorrow will be a bigger day as I have 1000 km to drive to get to Mataranka.

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Geocaching, Holidays, Out and About

Day one up the track …

June 11, 2012 Scott Leave a comment

Another below zero start to the day and once again the Clare Caravan Park’s power system overloaded and our power went off (we had been lucky to miss out all weekend).

This meant that we packed up to keep warm in the cold conditions. The final event for the weekend was the Riesling Trail Recovery Ride but unfortunately I had to hit the road for Coober Pedy. After getting a few photos of the riders and waving them off I started north through the Bundaleer Valley grabbing caches along the way.

One of the caches was at the Bundaleer Aqueduct. This was constructed back in 1903 and is some amazing engineering for the time. If it wasnt for geocaching, I probably wouldnt have found this.

The rest of the day was travelling through to Coober Pedy, taking in the Outback regions north of Port Augusta and the Woomera Prohibited Area.

Finally arrived in Coober Pedy around 7:30 pm, bunking down for the night in the Stuart Range Caravan Park.

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Geocaching, Out and About

A new Geocaching Power Trail for SA …

May 19, 2012 Scott 3 Comments

South Australia is starting to get a reputation for being the Geocaching Power Trail State of Australia. To keep the reputation going, I spent today out near Port Wakefield and Inkerman laying yet another Power Trail.

The series that I have put out is the “Premiers of South Australia“. Originally when doing the research, I thought. “how many could there be?”. Well there has been 45 in total since Parliament started in South Australia in 1856. Some like Thomas Playford were in for a long time (27 years) while others were only in for a few days such as John Baker. The early years of South Australia were obviously very tumultuous.

Rather than just a long line of geocaches, I hid them in the shape of South Australia and was lucky to find some roads that fit the shape well, just south east of Port Wakefield.

After spending a few hours hiding the caches, it was time to grab some of the caches that I have been passing by over the years due to lack of time. Most of these were along the coast and required a 4WD and some others didn’t but did require a lot of patience – a nano cache on a Leopard Tank. 🙁

Following the coast down, I traveled through Port Parham, Thompson Beach (couldn’t miss this one) finishing up at St Kilda on sunset. A good finish to the day. 🙂

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12 of 12, Family Life, Geocaching, Out and About

May 12 of 12 – quiet sort of day …

May 12, 2012 Scott Leave a comment

It was a funny sort of day today. Bradley had his Year 12 formal last night and was needed to be picked up at 4:00 am. As I was on call, there was no guarantee I would be around the place so Jenny headed out to pick him up.

I had a few projects to do today.

The first project: Waeco Battery Pack. Our battery pack is a few years old and doesn’t hold the charge too well. A replacement is $335 so I bought a couple of replacement batteries for $150 but my soldering iron wasn’t up to the task. First stop was Jaycar Electronics for a soldering iron with more power and then replace the batteries. Both tasks completed OK.

Second Project: Sleeping Bag zip. One of our sleeping bags has had issues with the zip with the slide breaking. It should be easy enough to get a new zip slide. Headed to Spotlight but they only had zips. So grabbed a short zip with the right size zip and took the slide and put it on the sleeping bag. New slide on OK but there seems to be other issues with the zip. 🙁

On my travels, I returned the suit that Bradley wore last night for his formal. The suit had been hired from Ferrari Formal Wear.

It was a good afternoon to be out and about and there were a few new geocaches around the Edwardstown and Morphettville areas and I made 9 geocache finds. Even one down near Morphettville Racecourse while the historic race with Black Caviar was being run.

Third Project: Film Canisters. South Australia is starting to get a reputation of having geocaching power trails. These involve many geocaches hidden close together along a road in a country area. There may be 50 to many hundred geocaches in a power trail. I recently completed the ET Highway Power Trail in Nevada which had 1500 geocaches. I have plans for a couple of trails but not to the size of the ET Highway power trail. Today I readied 220 film canisters for this task. It involved printing log sheets and putting one in each canister, then printing labels and labeling each canister. Task complete now to go out and hide them 🙂

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Geocaching, Out and About, USA 2012

Does it ever stop raining in Seattle …

April 19, 2012 Scott Leave a comment

With the presentations all finished for the International Association of Wildland Fire Conference, I didnt feel like spending the evening in my room. I was originally supposed to be going Geocaching with some other Aussies but they bailed on me – something about rain. It is only water – you wont rust. 🙂

So I donned some wet weather gear and started to walk around Downtown Seattle. I headed south towards Pioneer Square as I had heard that there was a Firefighters Memorial in Occidental Park. Not quite opposite was the Headquarters for the Seattle Fire Department as well as a lot of homeless people. This seems to be the area that there are a number of food centres for them.

Following the GPS, I found myself on the wharf area and it was getting wetter and I was getting hungry and there was a choice or McDonalds or Ivars Seafood & Chowder. I chose Ivars for a nice big steaming bowl of chowder. There is even an undercover heated outdoor eating area where you can watch the kids feed the gulls or the Fire Station next door. They even have a statue of Ivar feeding the gulls.

The Fire Station next door is Station #5 and as well as the normal Fire Truck it also houses the Fireboats out the back. Continuing on after tea, I made it back to Post Alley and the Wall of Gum looking for a Geocache on the wall. After 20 minutes I was unsuccessful – all the gum looks the same. 🙁

Up the hill and back up to Pikes Place Market for a coffee at the Original Starbucks (the place was empty tonight) and then headed back to the Hilton Hotel as it was still raining and my coat was starting to let water in.

Tomorrow is the field trip for the International Association of Wildland Fire Conference and then it will be time to pick up Jenny and the kids – they have spent the week at Whistler.

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Geocaching, Out and About, USA 2012

Day One of the International Association of Wildland Fire conference …

April 17, 2012 Scott Leave a comment

Day one of the International Association of Wildland Fire conference. It was amazing the numbers of Aussies attending, in fact around half of the presentations were by Australians. The conference was similar to the Bushfire CRC conference back in Australia with presentations by researchers into fire science and the like.

After a big day as the presentations were only 20 minutes long starting at 8:30 am and continuing til 5:00 pm, it was time to head out and grab some fresh air.

As it happened, a couple of Aussie geocachers were also in town. It was Mary and Mark of Aussie M&M. Mark does some work at Boeing on and off. Tonight we would cache around Downtown Seattle getting some of the favourite caches as decided by other cachers.

It was a little drizzly but not too bad and after caching until dusk it was time for something to eat. We chose a random sports bar called Floyds Place which wasnt too bad. It was then back out and caching until around 11:00 pm.

We even got questioned by security around the Zoo but once we explained we were geocaching he continued on his rounds.

$\"Changing Form\" at Kerry park$